Monday, May 5, 2008

Thinking Pink

Here's a promise: this will be the last post on cherry blossoms for at least a year! However, biking through Central Park this weekend with camera in pocket, this tree was hard to resist. To me the most resonant moment of the cherry blossom cycle is when the petals fall and the grass is carpeted in pink before the petals start to turn brown. I was initially the only person photographing here, but as the picture shows, within minutes it became a hot location and I realized that pictures of people taking pictures of other people underneath the cherry blossoms was a lot more interesting than the blossoms themselves. It helps to click and see this picture in a larger size, but I love the matched pair posing demurely in the middle with their faces obscured and the guy on his back behind them. However, I'm well aware that this is more of a "snap" than a "photograph" in the artistic sense of the word.

To see what I mean by this, you just have to go to Tod Papageorge's recently published book. Passing Through Eden, a collection of pictures he took in Central Park from the 1970s to the 1990s. It's a book that is at once documentary, sensuous, and allegorical. Revelatory both because Papageorge who heads Yale's graduate photo program has been famously absent from the exhibition world and because the pictures are so good. As well as being decisively and artfully composed every one of Papageorge's photographs hint at more complex narratives underneath and all have a certain psychological intensity and edge.

Papageorge has said, “One of my attractions to photography was that I felt it was much closer to writing and literature than any other visual art.” which helps explain why he stuck to black and white photography while his peers made the move into color. More importantly, like writing, his work seems to be where the outside world and the inner voice meet and even the most random moments are brought together into some kind of highly personal order.

From Passing Through Eden:

P.S.After looking at all these Tod Papageorge pictures, would my picture be improved by a tighter crop?

Very cool. The blossoms look like pink snow! I've been to NYC many times, but I actually don't think I've ever seen Central Park in the spring! I guess I'm missing out (although we do have some great bloomage in Western NC). I also want to check out that book of Central Park photos!

I like the tighter crop. It brings attention more to the people and their interaction with the tree and each other. The viewer can still see that it is a very large cherry blossom tree, and that the ground is indeed carpeted in pink, but the people help draw one in and feel connected to the image and what it has captured. The tighter crop lets one explore and look at each person and his or her expression, mood, activity, "discovering" each of them like a character in a book. I think that that was lost in the first image, I could really just see "people" in general, but it was hard to see what they were doing. I wouldn't have seen the man lying down at all if he had not been pointed out to me.

As they say, in photography it's what you leave out that makes a good image, and so I agree the cropped verion works best for me.I think this must be a very good year for blossom as I too have been addicted to snapping them from all angles.

I love the wider POV, it brings an element of dreaminess into the photo; the blossoms appear like a cloud hovering in mid-air. The tighter crop is still a nice photo, but doesn't have the same balanced appeal (with black-clad bodies on both sides) nor the same atmosphere. What an interesting site you have here!

I love both pics. but i would only crop the bigger picture just a little try to get just a little outside of the tree try not to go in as far as the last blossom pic. i also love all the black and white fotos they are really good ;)

"If only all blogs were as life-affirming and tender-hearted as that of gallerist James Danziger. Whether his focus falls on the work of an individual artist or a particular theme, The Year in Pictures is compulsive reading."